Faux Scandal in Indiana, Part II: This Is How The GOP Suppression Gambit Worksby georgia10
Mon Oct 20, 2008 at 04:20:05 PM PDT
The Indiana Post-Tribune reports:
Quote:
CROWN POINT -- Ethel Graves just wants to vote.
But like thousands of other would-be voters in Lake County, Graves has gotten swept up in a nationwide controversy over alleged voter fraud by the community organization ACORN.
After moving to Gary from Chicago in July, Graves was approached outside the city's Bureau of Motor Vehicles office by an ACORN canvasser who asked if she wanted to register to vote in the November general election.
"I said, 'Oh, good, you're saving me a trip (to the voter office in Crown Point),' " Graves recalled.
But nearly three months -- and a trip to Crown Point -- later, Graves still was waiting to receive her voter registration card last week.
That's because election officials stopped processing the applications submitted by ACORN amid accusations that information was falsified on hundreds of the forms.
Election workers now are culling through about 5,000 ACORN applications, trying to figure out which are fraudulent, assistant registration administrator Ruthann Hoagland said. [...]
Graves, who is handicapped, wants badly to vote before Nov. 4 to avoid the long lines predicted at the polls. But she can't unless she's registered. [...]
Hoagland said the registration process in Lake County has been slowed by the extra scrutiny workers have had to give the ACORN applications.
It's classic GOP projection. They claim that fake registrations are a deliberate attempt to "gum up the system" before the election, but it's their own very specious claims of "voter fraud" that are causing the system to slow to a crawl.
But it's not enough for Republicans that applications not be processed. Hell, isolated cases of voter registration fraud mean that Indiana should close its early voting locations! But, um, not the ones in the white suburbs. Just the ones in urban, minority areas, please:
Quote:
Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley has cited ACORN voter registration fraud as a main reason remote early voting locations should not be established in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago.
Meanwhile, assistant registration administrator Ruthann Hoagland says that Graves, the handicapped voter caught up in this whole mess, can still vote by showing up with her acknowledgment card (acknowledging that she's registered). Sure she can. Because of course, with 14 days left, that card is "in the mail," as they say. And of course, the poll workers are trained to let her vote even though her name may not be on the rolls, right? Indiana, after all, has such a voter-friendly election system...
What's likely to happen to Graves is that will be turned away at the polls or asked to fill out a provisional ballot. But that's the point of this faux fraud racket:
Quote:
"[I]f people's registrations aren't getting processed, it's potentially going to cause huge problems on Election Day. More people will turn up at the polls, and more people will be forced to cast provisional ballots.
"You also could see people turned away at the polls, in situations where poll workers have not been trained properly on how to deal with these situations."
The huge problem on Election Day--for the GOP--is that the nation isn't inclined to vote for Republicans. To counter that, the GOP has decided to make huge problems on Election Day for voters, especially voters in traditionally Democratic areas.
And that's how the GOP suppression gambit works: by screwing everything up.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/ ... 517/636127
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